Daniel Lew

Daniel Lew joined the Department of Biology at MIT as a Professor in the Spring of 2023. Professor Lew completed a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Rockefeller University in 1990, and then did postdoctoral work at the Scripps Research Institute where he investigated the cell cycle control in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. His research focuses on the study of cell polarity and the spatial decoding of chemical signals by cells, which are critical for many biological phenomena. 

We study questions in fundamental cell biology, using fungal models and a mix of experimental and computational approaches. Fungi and animals share conserved molecular strategies to perform many core cell functions, so the tractable yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae provides a superb model system to gain in-depth understanding that can be translated into computational models. We also study an emerging non-model fungus, Aureobasidium pullulans, that is an ubiquitous poly-extremophile with unconventional growth modes that raise novel questions in cell biology.

Some questions of interest:

• How do cells regulate cell polarity to achieve different morphologies?
• How do cells orient cell polarity in response to extracellular signals?
• How do cells distribute their contents, particularly in complex geometries?
• How do fungi growing under stringent turgor pressure expand their cell walls without lysing?
• How do cell-cell contacts between cell walls communicate mechanical information to the cell?